Gary Jason: School choice an issue made for Romney

It was widely thought that when Mitt Romney sewed up the Republican nomination, he would run a campaign of avoiding tough issues and sticking to explaining President Barack Obama's myriad and multiplying mistakes. But he has shown a surprising willingness to take bold positions, as illustrated by his recently enunciated open support for school choice – or what I prefer to call parental empowerment.

Romney said, "For too long, we've merely talked about the virtues of school choice without really doing something about it."

Moreover, he identified the biggest impediment to school choice (and school reform generally): the teachers unions. Referring to Obama's despicable decision to kill the District of Columbia's modest "Opportunity Scholarship" voucher program when he first entered office – even as he and his wife were enrolling their own children in the toniest private prep school in D.C. – Romney said, "In the Opportunity Scholarship the Democrats finally found the one federal program they are willing to cut. Why? Because success anywhere in our public schools is a rebuke to failure everywhere else. That's why the unions oppose even the most common-sense improvements."

Romney's stance is heartening, but he had better be prepared to defend it against Obama's distortion and deceit. Here is where a recent report by Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas will be of help.

Wolf's "The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Final Reports," provides a good survey of the results of one of the nation's longest standing voucher programs, and the results strongly support school choice.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has been in place for 22 years. It gives more than 23,000 poor Milwaukee kids a $6,400 voucher to attend any of 106 schools, many of them private or charter schools. It has recently been expanded to the city of Racine.

Wolf's survey shows that that there are no harmful effects of MPCP, and many positive ones. For example, MPCP students enrolling in a private high school have a 5 percent to 7 percent greater chance of graduating, going on to college and staying there than similar students stuck in the public school system. The MPCP students also score higher in reading and tie in math similar students in the public school system.

Moreover, the public school system appears to have improved somewhat because of the competition from voucher schools. The voucher program also has not increased racial segregation. And the program winds up saving taxpayers about $52 million per year.

These results are doubtless why the program continues to grow in popularity.

Of course, those of us who favor parental empowerment would like to see the vouchers be fully pro rata, that is, fully equal to the average per-pupil expenditure in the public school system. If the meager $6,400 vouchers are producing such good results, can you imagine how well the students would do with vouchers about twice that amount?

There is now a lot of empirical data demonstrating what both economic logic and common sense would suggest: that when the money collected to promote the social good we call universal education is broken up and follows the real clients – the children – the results are far better than when we hand the money to bureaucracies of people focused primarily on their own welfare, rather than the children's. Romney should master this data and communicate it to voters.

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